We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

Voyagers

Stoner knew. The fiery object hurtling toward the Earth was an alien spacecraft. But the world might never know. He was trapped in an iron cordon of secrecy, for the discovery had shattered the world power balance, setting off a brutal struggle for supremacy that raged from the sacred halls of the Vatican to the corridors of the Kremlin and the Pentagon. The forces of fear and treachery would use any weapon at their command, from mind war to sabotage, to keep the world in darkness.

Time Salvager

Convicted criminal James Griffin-Mars is no one's hero. In his time, Earth is a toxic, abandoned world, and humans have fled into the outer solar system to survive, eking out a fragile, doomed existence among the other planets and their moons. Those responsible for delaying humanity's demise believe time travel holds the key, and they have identified James, troubled though he is, as one of a select and expendable few ideally suited for the most dangerous job in history.

Sundiver: The Uplift Saga, Book 1

For nearly a billion years, every known sentient species in the universe has been the result of genetic and cultural guidance - or "uplifting" - by a previously uplifted patron race. Then humans are discovered. Having already uplifted chimps and dolphins, humanity clearly qualifies as an intelligent species, but did they actually evolve their own intelligence, or did some mysterious patron race begin the process, then suddenly abandon Earth?

The Collapsing Empire: The Interdependency, Book 1

Our universe is ruled by physics, and faster-than-light travel is not possible - until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transports us to other worlds, around other stars. Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It's a hedge against interstellar war - and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.

Deadeye: The Mutant Files, Book 1

In the year 2038, an act of bioengineered terrorism decimated humanity. Those who survived were either completely unaffected or developed horrible mutations. Across the globe, nations are now divided between areas populated by “norms” and lands run by "mutants" - Detective Cassandra Lee of Los Angeles's Special Investigative Section has built a fierce reputation taking down some of the city's most notorious criminals.

American Gods [TV Tie-In]

Locked behind bars for three years, Shadow did his time, quietly waiting for the day when he could return to Eagle Point, Indiana. A man no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, all he wanted was to be with Laura, the wife he deeply loved, and start a new life. But just days before his release, Laura and Shadow's best friend are killed in an accident. With his life in pieces and nothing to keep him tethered, Shadow accepts a job from a beguiling stranger he meets on the way home, an enigmatic man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday.

Ringworld

Welcome to Ringworld, an intermediate step between Dyson Spheres and planets. The gravitational force created by a rotation on its axis of 770 miles per second means no need for a roof. Walls 1,000 miles high at each rim will let in the sun and prevent much air from escaping. Larry Niven's novel, Ringworld, is the winner of the 1970 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 1970 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 1972 Ditmars, an Australian award for Best International Science Fiction.

Oryx and Crake: MaddAddam Trilogy, Book 1

Margaret Atwood's classic novel, The Handmaid's Tale, is about the future. Now, in Oryx and Crake, the future has changed: it's much worse. The narrator of this riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he's sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death.

The Memory of Earth: Homecoming, Volume 1

High above the planet Harmony, the Oversoul watches. Its task, programmed so many millennia ago, is to guard the human settlement on this planet, to protect this fragile remnant of Earth from all threats...to protect them, most of all, from themselves.

The Reality Dysfunction

The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton is the first in Night's Dawn, a sweeping galactic trilogy from the master of space opera. In AD 2600 the human race is finally realizing its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets across the galaxy host a multitude of wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary space-born creatures.

The Spaceship Next Door

When a spaceship landed in an open field in the quiet mill town of Sorrow Falls, Massachusetts, everyone realized humankind was not alone in the universe. With that realization everyone freaked out for a little while. Or almost everyone. The residents of Sorrow Falls took the news pretty well. This could have been due to a certain local quality of unflappability, or it could have been that in three years the ship did exactly nothing other than sit quietly in that field, and nobody understood the full extent of this nothing the ship was doing better than the people who lived right next door.

Hell's Gate: Multiverse, Book 1

Arcana has never encountered another intelligent species while exploring scores of other worlds. No cities, no vast empires, no civilizations, and no equivalent of their own dragons, gryphons, spells, and wizards. But all of that is about to change. It seems there is intelligent life elsewhere in the multiverse. Other human intelligent life, with terrifying new weapons and powers of the mind...and wizards who go by the strange title of ''scientist''.

NPCs

What happens when the haggling is done and the shops are closed? When the quest has been given, the steeds saddled, and the adventurers are off to their next encounter? They keep the world running, the food cooked, and the horses shoed, yet what adventurer has ever spared a thought or concern for the Non-Player Characters? In the town of Maplebark, four such NPCs settle in for a night of actively ignoring the adventurers drinking in the tavern when things go quickly and fatally awry.

Proxima: Book 1

The very far future: The galaxy is a drifting wreck of black holes, neutron stars, and chill white dwarfs. The age of star formation is long past. Yet there is life here, feeding off the energies of the stellar remnants, and there is mind, a tremendous galaxy-spanning intelligence each of whose thoughts lasts a hundred thousand years. And this mind cradles memories of a long-gone age when a more compact universe was full of light... The 27th century: Proxima Centauri, an undistinguished red dwarf star, is the nearest star to our sun. How would it be to live on such a world?

The Hike

When Ben, a suburban family man, takes a business trip to rural Pennsylvania, he decides to spend the afternoon before his dinner meeting on a short hike. Once he sets out into the woods behind his hotel, he quickly comes to realize that the path he has chosen cannot be given up easily. With no choice but to move forward, Ben finds himself falling deeper and deeper into a world of man-eating giants, bizarre demons, and colossal insects.

An Unattractive Vampire

After three centuries trapped underground, thousand-year-old Yulric Bile, also known as The Cursed One, The Devil's Apprentice, He Who Worships the Slumbering Horrors, awakens only to find that no one believes he is a vampire. Apparently he's just too ugly. Modern vampires, he soon discovers, are pretty, weak, and, most disturbing of all, good.

To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Riverworld Saga, Book 1

For explorer Richard Francis Burton, Alice Liddell Hargreaves - the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland - and the rest of humanity, death is nothing like they expected. Instead of heaven, hell, or even the black void of nothingness, all of the 36 billion people who ever lived on Earth are simultaneously resurrected on a world that has been transformed into a giant river valley.

The Dark Between the Stars: The Saga of Shadows, Book One

Twenty years after the elemental conflict that nearly tore apart the cosmos in The Saga of Seven Suns, a new threat emerges from the darkness. The human race must set aside its own inner conflicts to rebuild their alliance with the Ildiran Empire for the survival of the galaxy. In Kevin J. Anderson's The Dark Between the Stars, galactic empires clash, elemental beings devastate whole planetary systems, and factions of humanity are pitted against one another.

Monster Hunter International

Five days after Owen Zastava Pitt pushed his insufferable boss out of a 14th story window, he woke up in the hospital with a scarred face, an unbelievable memory, and a job offer. It turns out that monsters are real. All the things from myth, legend, and B-movies are out there, waiting in the shadows. Some of them are evil, and some are just hungry. Monster Hunter International is the premier eradication company in the business. And now Owen is their newest recruit.

The Forever War

William Mandella is a soldier in Earth's elite brigade. As the war against the Taurans sends him from galaxy to galaxy, he learns to use protective body shells and sophisticated weapons. He adapts to the cultures and terrains of distant outposts. But with each month in space, years are passing on Earth. Where will he call home when (and if) the Forever War ends?

The Mote in God's Eye

The Mote In God's Eye is their acknowledged masterpiece, an epic novel of mankind's first encounter with alien life that transcends the genre. No lesser an authority than Robert A. Heinlein called it "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read".

Off to Be the Wizard

It's a simple story. Boy finds proof that reality is a computer program. Boy uses program to manipulate time and space. Boy gets in trouble. Boy flees back in time to Medieval England to live as a wizard while he tries to think of a way to fix things. Boy gets in more trouble. Oh, and boy meets girl at some point.

Jim &#34;The Impatient&#34; says:"IT WOULD BE IDYLLIC, IF NOT FOR THE CORPSES"

Publisher's Summary

The possibilities are endless. Just be careful what you wish for....

The Western Front, 1916. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong and the wind in the leaves. Where have the mud, blood, and blasted landscape of no-man's-land gone? For that matter, where has Percy gone?

Madison, Wisconsin, 2015. Police officer Monica Jansson is exploring the burned-out home of a reclusive - some say mad, others allege dangerous - scientist who seems to have vanished. Sifting through the wreckage, Jansson find a curious gadget: a box containing some rudimentary wiring, a three-way switch, and . . . a potato. It is the prototype of an invention that will change the way humankind views the world forever.

The first novel in an exciting new collaboration between Discworld creator Terry Pratchett and the acclaimed SF writer Stephen Baxter, The Long Earth transports readers to the ends of the earth - and far beyond. All it takes is a single step. . . .

I love Terry Pratchett, I have read everything by him I could find….I would read his grocery list or the label in the back of his underwear. So when I discovered that this wasn’t a Disc World novel was momentarily disappointed….but that didn’t last. This is a terrific read, it’s closer to straight science fiction than the Disc World books…it feels a little like Strata (one of my favorite Pratchett books which is only tangentially Disc World based). Once it gets going (which it does pretty quickly it’s a brilliant ‘what if’ book which imagines a world where almost anyone can step between alternate universes each of which contains a variant on the earth we currently inhabit.I found the plot a little untidy in places. It develops then somewhat abandons multiple sub themes all of which I enjoyed and most of which would have deserved their own book. Nevertheless I found myself enjoying the book and its impeccable reading like you might enjoy a fine wine or a sunset. The story weaves quantum physics and universal branching theory with Cyberpunk, The Lost Gate by Scott Card and even a smattering of Little House on the Prairie. Although frequently amusing, its tongue is nowhere near buried as deep in cheek as with the Disc World books, but the story entertains mightily none the less. If you are already a Pratchett fan you can buy this book in the confident knowledge that whilst lacking Vimes or Vetenari you will enjoy a diverting diversion from the typical Pratchett cannon. If you have kids or young adults you might also want to point them in the direction of this book. The style is engaging, fun and easy to follow, whist still posing some intriguing scientific questions.

I love Terry Pratchett almost better than life itself. I've read a little Stephen Baxter, but nothing recently. I was a little apprehensive when I read that they were collaborating. I was afraid I'd be disappointed.

I wasn't.

The book is science fiction. It's obviously the beginning of a series, and there are lots of threads left dangling. But I really liked the idea of the multiple Earths that people suddenly learned how to "step" into. I'd've loved to have a little more actual STORY rather than just foundation-laying, but I still enjoyed the book.

The narrator does an EXCELLENT job. Again, I'm used to Nigel Planer or Stephen Briggs with Pratchett, and I was worried that I wouldn't like this narrator. But his use of voices and accents was exceptionally good, and really helped to make the characters stand out one from another. I thoroughly enjoyed his performance. Well done all around.

I am not sure exactly what I expected from this book. I suppose I expected the dry British humor of Terry Pratchett and the hard science of Stephen Baxter, but what I got was more like the humor of Stephen Baxter and the hard science of Terry Pratchett. While not a total loss this book was a great disappointment.

The story, of course, concerns the sudden appearance of multiple copies of Earth easily accessible through the process of "stepping" across the boundary, either with our without a mechanical aid. This concept provided an extraordinary basis for stories - the "first contact" of people from our Earth with those of alternate Earths - and seemed to allow for a series of future books, each based on the same concept but each very different in nature from the others. The book does have the feel of the first book in a series, but none of these other Earths have any human populations so there is nowhere to go with that general concept. Instead the alternate Earths are full of wildlife but no humans. There goes a whole series of "first contacts" and "clash of technologies" stories as concerns other humans. There still is, of course, the possibility of future stories involving contact between human and non-human intelligences, but there is precious little of that in this book and, I suspect, in future books. Instead we have the main characters "stepping" through the alternatives with little purpose other than to see what is there.

Of course the writing is quite good but I could not but hope for more interesting characters and events. Instead of Stanley searching for Dr Livingston through a dangerous African jungle I have more of the feeling of Stanley searching for the exit from a tame arboretum. Even the "danger" that they find does not seem terribly dangerous and I have no particular interest in reading the second book in the series in spite of the excellent narration by Michael Fenton-Stevens. I should have saved my credit for something more interesting. You might want to also.

Co-authored with Stephen Baxter this Terry Pratchett book is humorous at times but lacks the normal wit usually associated with his work. At eleven hours and thirty minutes the story jumps around at first with many different characters being intoduced then moving on quickly from one to the next; and at times the whole story drags. Kudos to those who could read the entire book in a day. It???s a story about parallel worlds where people learn to ???step??? from one world to another by a simple devise that can be made from parts found at Radio Shack and a potato. The main character Joshua discovers that he can ???step??? without using the devise and meets up with a former Tibetan motorcycle repairman now reincarnated as a super-computer that sometimes resides in a coke machine, and has been legally declared a human due to Tibetan religious beliefs. These two soon set off on a journey of exploration of the millions of parallel worlds ???to see what???s out there.??? The story has some other interesting characters including, some really tough nuns, a robotic cat, the strange inhabitants on the other worlds, one very annoying character named Sally, some strange troll creatures, and elves that kill for sport, but I never felt really engaged in the story. The narrator, Michael Fenton Stevens is okay but at times drawls on and is just plain boring. A very strange ending which makes it seem this probably is book one in a series.

I am an uber Discworld fan so I'll listen to anything from Terry Pratchett. The Long Earth was good. Discworld it was not. I enjoyed it non the less. More in the style of classic science fiction, the only thing it was missing was Pratchett's trademark sense of humor.

I've never read any of Pratchett's other books, so I'm coming at this with a clean slate. I say this because other reviewers (maybe fairly) point out how lacking this book is to Pratchett's other works. I'll be concise, as I don't want to waste your time, when you should be reading this AMAZING book.

This book melds multi-verse theory with adult sci-fi PERFECTLY. There are few, if any, holes in its logic. It's clear that it's setting up for the series, but the story comes together in a way that is both fulfilling and intellectually challenging. I've been waiting a long time for someone to actually get the parallel worlds theory into sci-fi in a unique, entertaining way, and THIS BOOK DOES JUST THAT. Due in large part to the spectacular narrator, the characters all have their own voices, and come alive within the story. Yes, there are a lot of characters, but it's easy to keep track.

The science of the book is sound, which is refreshing, with all the garbage science that most sci-fi books throw at the reader-- almost assuming that we all have a combined IQ of around 20.

I'm a huge sci-fi geek, and this book is top 5 for me, ALL TIME. As far as journey stories that take place over fascinating parallel worlds is concerned, I can't imagine finding a better book.

If you could sum up The Long Earth in three words, what would they be?

Fun and well performed

What did you like best about this story?

Unique premise

What about Michael Fenton-Stevens’s performance did you like?

Consistent voices with distinct enunciation and great pacing

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No I enjoyed listening in the car or train over several days as I commuted to and from NYC

Any additional comments?

I listen to sci-fi for enjoyment not critical competence- I read many less then enthusiastic reviews and found them missing this point- it was a fun listen not great literature- which was exactly what I was looking for. The idea of stepping was somewhat unique and I enjoyed it.

Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter team up to pen this novel with a very interesting premise: Humans figure out how to "step' which allows them to instantly teleport to an infinite number of alternate earths. Since the technology required to build a "stepper" device is readily available to almost everyone this changes civilization as we know it. Economies collapse and governments struggle to deal with the concept of governing across multiple earths.

This is an interesting concept for sure but the characters created by Pratchett & Baxter are a bit dry and not all that interesting. Pratchett's sense of humor does surface from time to time but those times are too few to carry the day. The story does get more and more interesting as the "Long Earth" is explored but when some larger plot lines eventually emerge the book ends and leaves you hanging.

Only take the plunge on this one if you are willing to pick up more than one book because as a standalone novel it feels pretty incomplete.

What could Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Plot would be nice.

Any additional comments?

I am trying different genres since I joined Audible and have had success with some books and others are a total waste of time. This would be one of those times. I really do try. I listen well into the book - hoping for it to get better. Never happened with this one. Try as I might, I could not figure out the story line or plot. You are introduced to different sets of characters and they may intersect along the way, but unless they all pile up in the last chapter with a conclusion, the characters were never given enough effort. If you like rambling characters, you will like this book. If you prefer a plot, buy a different book.

A wonderful book exploring what would happen if humanity not only found out that there were multiple earths in the multiverse, but someone invented a device that would let most humans "step" to adjacent worlds. This plays with the idea that there are countless hypothetical universes and that perhaps in each of them a different set of events took place; some where humanity never developed or a pivotal historical event happened differently; others where we have no moon or dinosaurs weren't entirely wiped out so evolution includes their descendants. This idea is grand enough that the book, which has a plot but also acts as a travelogue, is interesting when it is just cataloging the differing earths. We see these worlds largely through the eyes of Joshua Valiente, a natural stepper who does not need a device to step (a talent that is rare, but not unique). He joins a supposedly reincarnated Tibetan (reincarnated as a sort of AI) named Lopsang (whether he is really reincarnated or simply AI is never resolved by Joshua). Lopsang (and the company he is associated with) contract with Joshua and undertake a tour of the earths, during which they ascertain a threat moving toward our original Earth (the Datum) from the far earths. The book is clearly the first in a series and I look forward to seeing what happens next.